Dear Warlight players,

I posted an idea for a new setting I call `Deployment Limits` earlier on the forum, and it quickly climbed to 8th most popular Uservoice. Here`s the older thread:

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/136767-deployment-limits-tactical-warlight

It has finally received a reply from Fizzer, which sounds promising:

Fizzer (WarLight Creator, WarLight) responded · April 15, 2016

I love this idea, and I hope we can add it to the game some day. Thanks for the suggestion!

I hope this means we can see Deployment Limits in Warlight soon.

I almost never play games *without* a Deployment Limit anymore, so it would be great to see it opened up as an official setting, for everyone to try.

Thank you, Fizzer!

I have no played well over 50+ games with deployment limits, and it's always hard to go back to "regular" Warlight. (The tactics are far less interesting, for the most part.)

I hope we will get to see Deployment Limits in Warlight sooner rather than later.

Yeah, it would be super cool to have this implemented officially. One suggestion, though:

Implement bonus-dependent deployment limits. What this means: Say Switzerland is worth 2, and Belarus is worth 4 (as they're on the Europe map). Switzerland is made of 3 lands, while Belarus is made of 5. And say the deployment limit is set at 4x.

If you control all of Belarus, you can deploy up to 16 troops in it, no more. If you control 3/5, you can deploy (3/5)*16; rounding to 10. If you control all of Switzerland, you can deploy up to 8 troops in it, but if you control (2/3), you can only deploy up to what rounds to 5.

I wielded this rule in some games, but it was just so complicated to keep track of, it wasn't much fun, but it could be much better with computer handling all the calculations and counting involved.

+20

If I understand that correctly, it is only about how much one can deploy on single territory, not about how big the stack should be on that territory?

So, if one has 100 armies in adjacent territory, and you have only 1, and limit is 10 units per turns, you can reinforce yours to 11, and he can reinforce his on 110, so you can't defend it. That rule is better when one actually destroys opposition bonuses as later cannot have a chance to defend them. And there comes a question if that is good rule. Probably the best choice is to link that rule to no-split mode (deployment limit can be set only if no-split rule is active), thus helping defenders a bit.

However, I would rather see stacking limit as that can give more strategic points in game than deployment limits - you know the weakness of own and opposite positions, but you must plan in advance what to do next. There can also be a possibility that stacking limits of units rises as turns pass, so, stacking limits in first few turns may doubled or tripled in 20+ turns comparing to first few.

On the subject of bonus-specific deployment limits: that sounds incredibly complex and not all that different from Local Deployment. Maybe it has a fringe interest for some unusual sort of games, but I don't see it as a good general rule. I think it would confuse people, and overall it seems to give little dramatic difference over the currently-existing Local Deployment setting.

Hasdrubal,

It's the same issue with what you are suggesting: if the limit is *per territory*, there are all kinds of undesirable side effects. When I came up with this idea, I tried that version as well, but it has strange side effects, like any given player being certain of being able to control a choke point indefinitely, even with a small production.

After trying that for a while, I switched to Deployment Limits, and they have been really fun, in all kinds of games. Notably, they make multi-attack games much more manageable and exciting. In regular games, Deployment Limits create fun "trench wars", where borders move in a way much more similar to real warfare (at least pre-modern era warfare).

Yes, it's possible to create an enormous stack and barrel through your opponent, but this is costly: you must devote all your income to the project, then spend many turns gathering the stack, and finally moving it to the front. It can be a worthwhile strategy against a defensive enemy, but it's rare for a player to be able to afford the units and time necessary.

Stacking limits also bring about other problems, like an artificial army cap based on number of territories, which may be difficult to code and rubs shoulders with other settings. More problematically, stacking limits could just "freeze" action in a part of the map, where neither player can do anything (particularly at choke points). This isn't interesting or desirable, in my opinion.

If you feel otherwise, I invite you to test a hypothetical alternate rule in a a variety of games (as I have done with Deployment Limits). I'll happily join in. :)

Having said all that, I DO think that the following suggestions you made are worth experimenting with, and I encourage you to do so:

1. Using Deployment Limits with No-Split mode. As you point out, it could advantage the defender. (Or, at least, the player who doesn't overly concentrate his armies.)

2. A maximum stack limit would be easy to test informally. As long as it is significantly (maybe 5x?) higher than the Deployment Limit, I don't see any problem.

I wouldn't want either of these as a basic option, however. Deployment Limits work very well without them.

Question:

Has anyone played a Deployment Limit without me being present?

I know Genghis runs games with a Deployment Limit sometimes...